US news | The Guardian

Cleta Mitchell, a rightwing attorney tied to Trump, has joined with anti-immigrant groups to pour resources into election effortCleta Mitchell, an attorney who helped Donald Trump in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, has joined forces with far-right anti-immigrant groups to pour resources into stoking unfounded fears of non-US citizens voting in federal elections.Launched by powerful figures on the right, the effort includes members of Trump's inner circle, rightwing nativist groups that promote restricting legal immigration and election-denying activists like Mitchell. Leaders of some of the prominent groups have become active on Capitol Hill, even appearing alongside the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, to introduce a bill requiring people to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote. Continue reading...

Kremlin spokesman decries elimination ... of political rivals' while Hungarian prime minister calls Trump a man of honour'

Some Republicans called the decision shameful' and Democrats celebrated while warning against Trump's re-electionDonald Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records set off a political firestorm in Washington and beyond, with Republicans furiously lambasting the verdict as a miscarriage of justice while Democrats commended New York jurors for rendering a fair judgment in one of the US's most historic trials.Republicans unsurprisingly rallied around the former president , reiterating their baseless allegations that the Biden administration had engaged in political persecution of the former US president. Continue reading...

The incumbent president is badly behind - but now he has a chance to woo disenchanted Republicans who can't bear Donald's stinkIt took little more than nine hours of deliberation for a New York jury to ensure Donald Trump a new place in history. He was already the first US president, sitting or former, to be tried for a serious crime. Now he is the first ever to be convicted.Sure, the guilty verdict did not come in any of the three much graver cases still outstanding against him. Like Al Capone - to whom Trump has, self-incriminatingly, long liked to compare himself - he got done on Thursday for the relatively small stuff. But the law got him in the end. Continue reading...

ISS is the second proxy advisory firm to recommend that shareholders vote against Musk's high salary in recent weeksISS, a top proxy advisory firm, recommended Tesla shareholders vote against ratifying CEO Elon Musk's $56bn pay package, calling the compensation excessive in a rejection of the plan set by the electric vehicle maker's board.In a report sent late on Thursday, Institutional Shareholder Services also recommended a vote against the Tesla director James Murdoch, but backed votes for director Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk's brother, and for the company's proposed move to change its state of incorporation to Texas from Delaware. Continue reading...

UC Santa Cruz and Wayne State University in Detroit clamped down on protests as graduates staged a walkout at MITPolice in riot gear surrounded arm-in-arm protesters on Friday at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where pro-Palestinian demonstrations have blocked the main entrance to the campus this week.Campus, local and state police swarmed the protesters, and video showed officers telling people to leave, then taking away signs and part of a barricade, local news stations reported. There appeared to be some pushing and shoving between police and protesters. Officers carried zip ties and appeared to detain a few people. Continue reading...

Federal Aviation Administration will meet company weekly and tells it to transform its safety cultureBoeing faces continued limits on the number of planes it manufactures as well as increased safety inspections after the US aviation regulator called on it to transform its safety culture.The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) held a three-hour meeting on Thursday with senior Boeing executives, who outlined the US aircraft maker's plan to resolve problems with safety and quality control. Continue reading...

Minnesota's versatile big man wasn't the reason the Timberwolves were demolished by the Mavericks in the West finals. But he makes for a uniquely convenient scapegoatThe space of a seven-footer is never refined, always an inch taller than normal". Everyone has one guy they know, taller than any other, six-foot-something but not seven-feet tall. That'd be ridiculous.So we put em in shorts, teach the seven-footers how to shoot a basketball, and one seven-footer came out better than any other at shooting basketballs: Karl-Anthony Towns, self-assured to the point where he long ago pointed out which seven-footer shot basketballs best. It was him. Karl-Anthony Towns shot them best. Continue reading...

Their US immigration status makes securing affordable education a nightmare. Georgia's Freedom University offers an alternative pathOnly hours after Joe Biden spoke at Atlanta's Morehouse College - a 19 May ceremony watched closely in light of student protests in support of Palestine - a much smaller, visibly different graduation ceremony took place nearby.The ceremony's location was not publicized, a nod to past threats the Ku Klux Klan has directed at the school, as well as continuing hate mail and social media attacks. Continue reading...

With the UK judicial system cut to breaking point, conservative religious forces are moving into a space vacated by the state

A loss of the honorific Mr' in the UK's Daily Telegraph may be just the start, after the former president was found guilty in his hush-money trial

Some are glad to see him held accountable' while others call conviction a travesty' and believe it will embolden his baseInside the Wisconsin state capitol on Thursday evening, Brian Schimming, the chair of the Wisconsin Republican party, decried Donald Trump's conviction in blistering terms. The conviction was an embarrassment. The verdict, rigged". The legal system, akin to that of a banana republic".On the sprawling lawn outside the state capitol building, in deep-blue Madison, Cheyenne Carter, a 25-year-old administrative assistant, reflected on the verdict more matter-of-factly.Trump found guilty of hush-money plot to influence electionCould Trump go to prison and can he still run for president?What is Biden's next move?With conviction, good fortune runs out for Teflon Don' Continue reading...

Labour's purge of Faiza Shaheen and Diane Abbott increases my fear about how it will behave in officePurging women of colour on spurious grounds while handing safe parliamentary seats to apparatchiks like sweets: Keir Starmer's Labour is high on hubris and telling us precisely how it will govern. As Tony Blair's former director of political operations John McTernan put it, the sham investigation process into Diane Abbott, Britain's first Black female MP, was designed to humiliate".The same goes for Faiza Shaheen, Labour's former candidate in Chingford and Woodford Green. Shaheen is a Muslim woman of colour and the daughter of a mechanic, who defied the odds to become a successful academic and won the overwhelming backing of her local party. Starmer previously described her as a fantastic" and a fabulous candidate", praising her passion, expert understanding and insight on inequality". Yesterday, while canvassing with enthusiastic volunteers and carrying her newborn baby, she discovered via the Times newspaper that she was to be purged. Her offence? Tweets going back ten years, one of which, she said, was about her experience of Islamophobia in the party". Another related to text above a clip of the American Jewish comedian Jon Stewart on the Daily Show satirising how criticism of Israel leads to online dogpiling by the country's defenders: text that had a caption about the Israel lobby", which she concedes plays into a trope," adding: I absolutely don't agree with that and I'm sorry about that".Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Trump is the first US president to become a convicted felon. Plus, Nan Goldin on her shame over GazaGood morning.Donald Trump has been found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, a historic conviction in the first criminal trial against a current or former US president.What happens next? He will be sentenced on 11 July at 10am ET and is certain to appeal. The Republican National Convention, where will be formally nominated as the party's candidate for president, happens four days later.What does it mean for Trump's polling? His numbers have remained unchanged throughout the trial - Trump is averaging 41.2%, Biden 39.5% - but roughly a quarter of people who said they would vote Trump also said they would reconsider their vote if he were convicted of a crime.What prompted the change? Biden's decision followed calls from US allies in Europe, including the UK, Germany and France, and the Nato secretary general, for Ukraine to be able to use western-provided weapons against military targets in Russia.How might Russia react? President Vladimir Putin has warned of serious consequences" if Russia is struck with western weapons. Continue reading...

Hesen Jabr says New York University's Langone hospital fired her after she made remarks while accepting award for her workA nurse at New York University's Langone hospital was fired after mentioning what she described as a genocide" in Gaza during an award ceremony speech.Hesen Jabr, 34, a labor and delivery nurse who worked at NYU Langone for nearly 10 years, made the remarks while accepting an award earlier this month for providing excellent care to patients suffering perinatal loss. Continue reading...

There have been highs and lows during the country's long voting period. Now pessimism is setting inTomorrow I will vote. I'll probably walk to the same mid-20th century bungalow that I walked to five years ago - it was once a primary school my daughter went to - where you vote in a room on the margins of the open space that was a playground. It is a site in which the ballot is cast (or the button pressed) in the upper middle-class neighbourhood of Ballygunge in Kolkata. It has a historic serenity - even an optimism, given its immediate pedagogical past - that may not be typical at all of the circumstances of voting in India.The general elections are, however, always largely orderly (largely" being a crucial qualifier). This one hasn't been very different in that regard. After I vote, I expect to receive an indelible ink mark that will stretch vertically on my forefinger from the cuticle to the skin below it; somehow, like a memory that was once all-important, it will fade after a few days. There have been stories about people who have managed to get the mark off; one of them, who voted eight times for the Bharatiya Janata party, was arrested. Continue reading...

The United States is co-hosting the T20 World Cup and it all starts on Saturday. Where? How? And why? Let's chop it upSo the US is hosting a World Cup of cricket? The game that takes five days to play, where they stop for sandwiches and cups of tea, and sometimes don't even have a winner? Well, sort of. But you're talking about Test cricket, which doesn't have a World Cup, but sort of does in the form of the World Test Championship.Got it. So this is the game that takes an entire day to play although, mercifully, you do usually get a winner? Well, sort of. But you're talking about one-day cricket, which is played over the course of, appropriately, a day. That has its own World Cup, which takes place every four years, and next takes place in 2027. Continue reading...

Despite being found guilty on all 34 charges, rules in Florida and New York mean Trump is likely to be able to cast his ballot

Exactly half of Cincy's first-choice starters from 2023 left the club, leaving five holes for the front office to fill. And yet, they're right back where they were last yearWelcome back to the Guardian's MLS power rankings, where I have a beef with your specific team and your specific team alone. Xherdan Shaqiri might have ducked out of his MLS duties early ahead of the international break, but me? I'm still going strong, baby.Now, as a reminder, these aren't your standard, run-of-the-mill power rankings. We're still ranking teams from worst to first. But along with the rankings, we're diving deep into a handful of teams from around the league who are doing particularly interesting things. Continue reading...

Teenager continues remarkable rise in an elite field at this weekend's US Darts Masters at Madison Square GardenFive days after winning the Premier League Darts title by vanquishing world No 1 Luke Humphries with a sensational nine-dart finish before a mass of 14,000 roaring spectators inside London's O Arena, Luke Littler has found himself up against a far less forgiving opponent on Tuesday afternoon: Manhattan's snarling rush-hour traffic.An all-day media spree pinballing around New York City to promote this weekend's US Darts Masters at Madison Square Garden has careened off the rails after the hired driver of Littler's black Cadillac Escalade ESV went to the wrong location for a live in-studio appearance on Ariel Helwani's The MMA Hour podcast, leaving the show's genial host treading water on air. When he finally arrives at the Financial District offices nearly 40 minutes late, the 17-year-old sensation known as Luke the Nuke calmly slides into his chair on set while an entourage including his parents, girlfriend and best mate crowd into the green room to watch, all of them smarting from the same lesson every New York neophyte absorbs early on: the subway is always faster. Continue reading...

CBS's Uefa Champions League Today has been met with heaps of acclaim, drawing comparisons to TNT's Inside the NBA. And Jamie Carragher has proven essential to the chemistryWhen Jamie Carragher was approached to join CBS's Uefa Champions League Today panel, he'd already established himself as one of the most notable pundits in soccer.But while English viewers had long grown accustomed to the Liverpool legend's cutting remarks and eye-opening analysis on Sky Sports, there was one aspect of Carragher's punditry that CBS Sports' senior creative director Peter Radovich was concerned about. Continue reading...

US tornado season proving to be one of the most active of recent years as severe thunderstorms hamper recovery effortsThe US was struck by violent storms over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, with Sunday named the worst weather day so far this year after more than 600 reports of damage were received from 20 states.Storms developed across central southern areas on Saturday night before spreading farther east on Sunday, with more than 60 confirmed tornadoes resulting in at least 26 deaths. Northern Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kentucky were worst affected, with wind speeds of up to 135mph recorded, strong enough to overturn an 18-wheel truck near Dallas. Continue reading...

All opinions could be found on streets of New York City after conviction, including: This is going to hand him the election'The aftermath of the conviction of Donald Trump on 34 felony counts played out amid scenes of stress, jubilation and shock in Manhattan - the slice of New York that first made the former US president into a global celebrity and has now declared one of its most famous sons a guilty criminal.Police cruisers tore downtown after jurors announced they'd reached a verdict in Trump's hush-money trial, and many New Yorkers had been glued to their phones waiting for the decision to be relayed. Mayor Eric Adams tried to reassure citizens that authorities were prepared for unrest. Continue reading...

Donald Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts was met with cheers from his detractors, while many supporters of the former US president saw the verdict as a miscarriage of justice. Found guilty by a New York jury of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star ahead of the 2016 election, Trump is due to be sentenced on 11 July, three days before the start of the Republican National Convention where he is expected to be formally nominated as their presidential candidate.

The former president appears on front pages across the globe on Friday, as the world's media takes in the unprecedented outcome of the hush-money trial

In today's newsletter: after last night's historic verdict, here's what you need to know about the consequences Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning. Donald Trump is a convicted criminal. A jury in New York unanimously found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in an attempt to cover up the alleged sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels that threatened his bid for the presidency in 2016. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime, and he could yet be the first convicted felon to be elected president. This is a historic moment, and its reverberations have barely begun to be felt.Today's newsletter explains what it all means: the verdicts, the instant fundraising emails, and the consequences still to come. Here are the headlines.Cancer research | Thousands of patients in England are to be fast-tracked into groundbreaking trials of personalised cancer vaccines in a world-first NHS matchmaking" scheme to save lives. The jabs, which aim to provide a permanent cure, are custom-built for each patient in just a few weeks.General election 2024 | Diane Abbott has not been treated fairly or appropriately" by some Labour colleagues and should be allowed to stand again for the party at the election if she wishes to do so, Angela Rayner has said. Party apparatchiks will meet next week to agree on Labour's full list of parliamentary candidates.Israel | An investigative reporter with Israel's leading leftwing newspaper, Haaretz, has said unnamed senior security officials threatened actions against him if he reported on attempts by the former head of the Mossad to intimidate the ex-prosecutor of the international criminal court.London | A nine-year-old girl is in critical condition after she was shot by a hitman on a motorbike while eating with her family at a Turkish restaurant. Three men were also hit and wounded in the incident in Dalston, north-east London on Wednesday evening.Ukraine | Joe Biden has allowed Ukraine to use some US-made weapons over one part of the Russian border, relaxing an important constraint on Ukraine's ability to defend itself. The change is designed to allow Kyiv's forces to defend against an offensive aimed at the city of Kharkiv. Continue reading...

Trump claims he is innocent' and condemns what he calls a rigged' trial; sentencing to come days before Republican National Convention

Twelve jurors in New York have presented their fellow Americans with a simple question: are you willing to elect a convicted criminal to the White House?On Thursday, Donald Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. The verdict makes him the first president, current or former, to be found guilty of felony crimes in the US's near 250-year history. Regardless, the conviction does not disqualify Trump as a presidential candidate or bar him from again sitting in the Oval Office.Trump, who opted not to take the stand during the trial, has denied wrongdoing, railed against the proceedings and ahead of the verdict compared himself to a saint: Mother Teresa could not beat these charges. The charges are rigged," he said on Wednesday. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is expected to appeal the verdict.The Guardian's Sam Levine has been in court over the last several weeks covering all the developments - here are three testimonies he found most memorable.

Donald Trump has become the first former US president to be convicted of a crime after historic hush-money trial in New York

Republican House speaker Mike Johnson bemoans shameful day' while Democrats praise strength of US justice systemDonald Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records set off a political firestorm in Washington on Thursday, with Republicans furiously lambasting the verdict as a miscarriage of justice while Democrats commended New York jurors for rendering a fair judgment in one of the most historic trials in US history.Republicans unsurprisingly rallied around Trump, reiterating their baseless allegations that the Biden administration had engaged in political persecution of the former US president. Continue reading...

Speaking after he was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, the former US president said the 'real verdict is going to be November 5, by the people'. Trump complained that his trial was 'a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who is corrupt'

Former president Donald Trump a convicted felon. Now what?

Farm worker who had contact with sick cows tests positive for H5N1, making it the second case detected in MichiganA third person has now tested positive for H5N1 in the US, the second case to be detected in Michigan, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Thursday.A farm worker who had contact with sick cows tested positive for the virus. This new case does not seem to indicate human-to-human transmission of the highly pathogenic avian flu, as it was detected on a different farm from the previous Michigan case, officials said. Continue reading...

Prince King pleaded not guilty on Tuesday over what police said was nine-year reign of terror in Azusa, CaliforniaAn elderly California man accused of menacing his neighborhood for almost a decade with a slingshot and ball bearings has died a day after bonding out of jail.Prince King, 81, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to a number of vandalism charges relating to what authorities said was a nine-year reign of terror in which he would maliciously smash windows of homes and vehicles in his Azusa community. Continue reading...

William Knight, 37, of South Dakota, accused of being among first participants in Capitol attack, faces two felony chargesThe FBI has arrested a South Dakota man on charges that he stood among the first participants in the January 6 insurrection, allegedly breaking police lines and ramming a large sign toward officers during the riot.William Knight, 37, of Rapid City, faces two felony charges of obstructing law enforcement and resisting or impeding officers, the justice department announced on Thursday. He also faces five misdemeanor charges, including engaging in violence on the day supporters of Donald Trump tried to derail certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Continue reading...

Bill Pruitt also says the then reality TV star was incompetent and implied illicit trysts while engaged to MelaniaDonald Trump used a racial epithet to reject the prospect of a Black winner on the debut season of The Apprentice, the Emmy-nominated series that transformed the former president into a reality TV star and fuelled his political career.Trump rejected the views of close aides that Kwame Jackson, a broker who worked for Goldman Sachs, had been the most impressive contestant, saying, Would America buy a [N-word] winning?", according to a producer who worked on the NBC show's opening series in 2004, when it was called Meet the Billionaire. Continue reading...

India's prime minister encourages a belief in his divinity, leading followers to think it is God's purpose to spread fear and loathingNo party or candidate shall include in any activity which may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic." So reads the rulebook for Indian elections. Has anyone told Narendra Modi? India's prime minister has resorted to overtly Islamophobic language during the two-month campaign, painting India's 200 million Muslims as an existential threat to the Hindu majority. Laughably, the body charged with conducting free and fair polls did issue a feeble call for restraint from star campaigners". With the Indian election results out next week, one commentator warned Mr Modi has put a target on Indian Muslims' backs, redirecting the anger of poor and marginalised Hindu communities away from crony capitalists and the privileged upper castes".Mr Modi's tirades are meant to distract an electorate suffering from high inflation and a lack of jobs despite rapid economic growth. His Bharatiya Janata party's political strategy is to emphasise threats to Hindu civilisation, and the need for a united Hindu nation against Muslims. However, Mr Modi has fused this Hindu nationalism with the idea that he was sent by God. The Congress party's Rahul Gandhi, his main opponent, suggested that anyone else making such a claim needed to see a psychiatrist.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Embattled senator reportedly procures 800 signatures needed before 4 June deadline to appear on November ballotSenator Bob Menendez has reportedly procured enough signatures to run for re-election as an independent, even while the incumbent Democrat faces bribery charges over his alleged work promoting the interests of the Egyptian government.NBC News reported on Thursday that Menendez secured the 800 signatures needed by 4 June to appear on the November ballot, although the senator's team hopes to collect as many as 10,000 signatures before the Tuesday deadline. Continue reading...

Panel asks to rehear judge's instructions as Trump rants about proceedings and compares himself to Mother TeresaDonald Trump's criminal hush-money case in New York enters its second day of jury deliberations on Thursday with panelists weighing whether a payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels was part of a plot to sway the 2016 election.The jurors deliberated for approximately four and a half hours on Wednesday after beginning their discussions at about 11.30am. Continue reading...

House speaker plans far-reaching bill including tax cuts and border security to make Trump the most consequential president'Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, is planning a sweeping ideological legislative drive that aims to make Donald Trump the most consequential president of the modern era" if the Republicans win power in November.A far-reaching bill containing a range of policy priorities at once - including tax cuts worth trillions, border security and rolling back Obamacare - is being prepared to avoid the mistakes the GOP believed happened early in Trump's first term, when Johnson says the party wasted time because its victory over Hillary Clinton took it by surprise. Continue reading...

The backlash to the Bridgerton star's very normal-sized body is not just because she appears on screen - but because she dares to be desirable and sexual on screenEvery so often a celebrity goes on a publicity tour that is so undeniably charming that it ends up all over the internet. Right now it is Nicola Coughlan, who is travelling around the world talking to people about her saucy starring role in the new season of Bridgerton.I (queer, fat, middle-aged, horny) am the exact demographic to receive this content. Her turn as straight-edged lesbian Clare in Derry Girls is an incredible component of one of my favourite comedies.There's nothing wrong with fat - it's hardly a moral shortcoming - but a zest for equality and diversity (and in this case good acting) just isn't enough to make a fat girl who wins the prince remotely plausible. Continue reading...

Jamie Ray Mills, 50, is scheduled to be put to death after he was convicted of bludgeoning an elderly couple 20 years agoAlabama is set to execute a man on Thursday evening who was convicted of bludgeoning an elderly couple to death 20 years ago to steal prescription drugs and $140 from their home.Jamie Ray Mills, 50, is scheduled to be put to death on Thursday evening at a south Alabama prison. It will be Alabama's first execution since the state conducted the US's first execution using nitrogen gas in January. Lethal injection remains the state's main execution method unless an inmate has requested nitrogen. Continue reading...

Critics fear law could stop bystanders from holding police accountable by preventing them from filming officersCritics of a new Louisiana law that makes it a crime to approach within 25ft (7.6 meters) of a police officer under certain circumstances fear the measure could hinder the public's ability to film officers - a tool that has increasingly been used to hold police accountable.Under the law, anyone who is convicted of knowingly or intentionally" approaching an officer who is lawfully engaged in the execution of his official duties", and after being ordered to stop approaching or retreat", faces a fine up to $500, as many as 60 days in jail or both. The law was signed by Governor Jeff Landry, a Republican, on Tuesday and goes into effect on 1 August. Continue reading...

Egypt and a few countries are doing all they can, but the wider international community must step up

One of this summer's hosts is represented by a multinational, multicultural team that embodies the American dreamOne summer night in Centerville, Ohio, in 2010, a scattered band of club cricketers gathered for their regular Wednesday practice session in Stubbs Park. One had brought a new recruit, his 19-year-old nephew Ali Khan, who had only just come over from his village in Attock, Pakistan. Khan had only ever played with a tape ball, but after his first over with a real one all the other players stopped to watch his second. Everyone," Khan remembers, was like: Wait, who's this kid? Where's he from again?'" They put him in the first team that very same weekend.Over a decade later, Khan, now 33, has just finished the second of three games against Bangladesh at the Prairie View ground in Houston, a warm-up series for the World Cup. USA were one-nil up and one win away from their first-ever series victory against a Test-playing nation, but the game was getting away from them. Bangladesh only needed 21 runs from the last 18 balls. They had four wickets left, and one of them was Shakib Al Hasan, one of the world's very best all-round cricketers, who was 30 not out off just 22 balls. Continue reading...

The officials accuse the administration of not telling the truth about Israel's obstruction of aid to Palestinians in GazaTwo more US officials have resigned over the Gaza war, saying that the Biden administration is not telling the truth about Israeli obstruction of humanitarian assistance to more than two million Palestinians trapped and starving in the tiny coastal strip.Alexander Smith, a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said he was given a choice between resignation and dismissal after preparing a presentation on maternal and child mortality among Palestinians, which was cancelled at the last minute by USAID leadership last week. Continue reading...